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‘Cultural genocide’: a rose is a rose . . .

Thu., June 11, 2015

Re: Did Canada really commit a ‘cultural genocide'? Opinion June 9

Did Canada really commit a ‘cultural genocide'? Opinion June 9

Richard Gwyn praises the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report for its eloquence and passion. But then questions its conclusion of “cultural genocide” because most of us don’t believe we engaged in cultural genocide. Yet that is precisely the point.

The commission’s extensive findings of atrocities are shocking us because they crack our Canadian preference for denial. We don’t like to admit that our history of white supremacy is steeped in racism, such as when our first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald called indigenous people “savages.”

Yet reconciliation means honestly acknowledging, and not fudging, our colonial misdeeds, past and present, then making amends. That means the federal government must today cease its colonial coercion of indigenous leaders to renounce legal title to their territories as a precondition for negotiating treaty implementation.

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Affirming indigenous treaties and legal title over their territories is key to prosperity replacing indigenous poverty: a good start for reconciliation.

Ben Carniol, professor emeritus, Ryerson University

Many wise, avuncular commentators including Conrad Black and Richard Gwyn are taking exception to use of the term cultural genocide in the context of Canada’s treatment of aboriginal Canadians. There is no doubt that syntactically, it is hard to fit those deeds under the genocide umbrella.

First, genocides tend to be conducted over relatively brief periods of time, while Canada’s atrocities were perpetuated for over a century. Instead of trying to kill the aboriginal peoples, Canada and its religious helpmates tried to keep them barely alive for as long as possible.

Genocide speaks to a barbarity that Canada deliberately avoided. Effectively, what Canada did amounts to long-term torture, a kind of apartheid by which subjects could be malnourished, undereducated and forced as best as we could manage it, to fail socially and economically for as long as possible.

If I were the subject of such abuse, I would prefer genocide. If anything, the term cultural genocide understates the cruelty Canada has inflicted.

By the way, there are no juridical rules preventing citizens, including judges, from speaking out to identify crimes when they feel that one has been committed and it seems a bit cheap to pick on someone’s choice of words in these circumstances.

Patrick Cowan, North York

Is Richard Gwyn really saying that because many Canadians don’t believe their country is capable of the attempted genocide it perpetrated on native peoples we should therefore not call it that? Or that native people should become genocide deniers in order to help the rest of Canada feel better about itself and that will quicken the process of understanding and trust? Or that it was good because more native people learned to read and write English?

Genocide is the correct term to describe the purpose and near effect of the residential schools and we all need to not feel good about that in any way, shape or form.

Geoffrey Rowan, Toronto

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